Madame Arthur Fontaine (Marie Escudier, born 1865)

Odilon Redon's 'Madame Arthur Fontaine (Marie Escudier, born 1865)' from 1901 portrays one of Paris's most celebrated hostesses, whose salon was a gathering point for the Symbolist poets and musicians including Fauré, Debussy, and Mallarmé. Redon was a regular guest at her salon and a close friend, and this portrait has the intimacy of a work painted in deep mutual understanding. The Metropolitan Museum of Art canvas shows Redon's late figure painting at its most radiant — the sitter emerging from a field of colour like a Symbolist vision rather than a conventional social portrait.

Redon surrounds the sitter with his characteristic haze of soft colour, the figure emerging from an atmospheric ground of warm roses and golds rather than a conventional background. The face is rendered with gentle precision within the overall chromatic softness. Paint is applied thinly and smoothly, with Redon's extraordinary sensitivity to colour temperature used to give the figure an almost luminous, otherworldly presence.